Frederic Pryor
Frederic L. Pryor (born 1933) is an American Senior Research Scholar of Economics at Swarthmore College, widely known for his role in a noted Cold War spy-swap, subsequent to the 1960 U-2 incident.
Pryor has worked as an economic advisor in Ukraine and Latvia, was employed as a consultant to the World Bank in Africa, served as a Research Director to the Pennsylvania Tax Commission, and has been a Research Associate at both the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, Calif., and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He has won research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Council of Soviet and East European Studies, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Receiving a B.A. in chemistry from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale, he has occupied teaching or research positions at Yale, the University of California, the University of Michigan, the University of Paris, the International Institute for Graduate Studies in Geneva, and several other universities. He joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1967.
In August, 1961, Pryor was arrested and held without charge by the East German police. He had been taking graduate courses in East European studies at the Free University of West Berlin since 1959. On February 10, 1962, Pryor was freed at Checkpoint Charlie just before American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was swapped for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (a.k.a. Rudolf Ivanovich Abel) at the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam, East Germany, as a result of negotiations conducted through James B. Donovan.
